Some of that hardware is going beyond prototype and making its way to the commercial market. One notable result came from a proposal to create a device to help analyze people with sleep disorders without having them spend a night in a hospital or otherwise monitored room hooked up to a complex set of electrodes and machines.

That device,
the SleepShirt, is a shirt with sensors that monitor a person’s sleep to diagnose irregularities such as sleep apnea. The students who developed the shirt created a startup called Rest Devices to commercialize it, and they also are working on a baby onesie that can allow parents or caregivers to monitor children while they sleep. Sensors inside the clothing send information to a smartphone application or tablet via a wireless connection.

Another device from the class is being commercialized through a startup formed by MIT PhD candidate Danielle Zurovcik, Hanumara says. The device is a low-energy system for negative pressure wound therapy, which draws fluid out of an ulcer or a sucking wound to promote healing. The device is based on the idea that it’s the seal and not the amount of pressure that is key to the device. “The energy [for the device] can be a bellows expanding, like a toilet plunger,” Hanumara says. “If you connect that up and seal your connection really well, it can actually work.”

Other devices designed by the class that could make their way into the medical field include a thoracoscopic screwdriver used to place screws to repair cracked ribs from the inside, and a low-cost, lightweight robot for image-guided lung biopsies.

A company has licensed the screwdriver prototype as an enabling technology, Hanumara told us, declining to divulge specifics on the company or the deal. The deal resulted in a working prototype, a worldwide patent that has been approved in China, and numerous follow-on research projects and funding, Rajiv Gupta, an MD and PhD with Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School who worked on the project in 2004 with the class, told us.

Gupta calls the ability to work closely with teams on devices “a unique and exciting opportunity” that “gives me a way to look at the problems I face in routine practice of medicine in a completely different light.”

He said that while there are other project-oriented courses like this one at MIT and other universities, the opportunity to pair physicians and students to create devices from a clinical rather than merely a technological perspective is unique.

I found this story really interesting to cover, and think this model should be replicated and promoted so more of these devices make it to the commercial market. What better than to hear directly from physicians about what they need to do their job, and get some of the best and brightest minds to develop them in collaboration? This could help get some of the most useful tools into the medical field as efficiently as possible.

I'm glad you covered this design program in your article. This need-driven project approach as a class structure teaches students so much more about real-world experiences that await them post-university than the traditional classroom approach can.

And while there are similar programs at other universities, these programs as a whole are in the minority when it comes to the teaching of engineering and design.

I know, Cabe, I can't imagine some of these things being used on patients...but hopefully they would be under anesthesia during the process! The thing is, I think there is more medical innovation than we think and I've written about some cool stuff lately...I think it's just difficult to get it out into the commercial market because of regulations and other hurdles to actual adoption. The minds and the technology are there, it's just seeing it make it to what has become a commoditized and politicized medical industry. And in my mind, it's one of the most important fields for innovation.

@Cabe: Huh? R&D spending on healthcare is much larger than R&D spending on smartphones. U.S. healthcare and life science companies spent $182 billion on R&D in 2012. That's not even counting government spending on healthcare R&D. That's just private sector spending.

Apple spent $3.4 billion on R&D in 2012, and smartphones are only part of that. Add in Microsoft ($9.8 billion) and Google ($5.2 billion), and that's still less than a tenth of healthcare R&D.

In the U.S., we spend nearly 18% of GDP ($8233 per person per year) on healthcare. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't spend that much on a smartphone.

Thank you, CLMcDade. I completely agree with you. I think this is the way forward to get innovations out into the commercial market and best prepare new engineers for their professional careers as well. I really enjoyed covering this topic, and appreciate your interest in it.

I couldn't agree more, CLMcDade. I like the idea that "everybody in the class has to be able to do the math, the analysis, the real dimension drwaings." It's nice to know that there's such practical application of knowledge outside the realm of the senior design project.

I think the approach is excellent and should be duplicated as often as possible by university engineering departments. This will give the students "hands-on" experience and allow them to solve, or at least approach solving, real-world problems faced on a daily basis. At GE, this is what we called quality functional deployment (QFD). Taking customer "wants" and transferring them into specifications usable enough to produce an actual product. Great experience for an engineering student. Great post Elizabeth--very informative.

I'm glad you enjoyed the post, bobjengr. It is always good to hear the perspective of someone in the industry as well. I think, too, this is just a more practical way to design things that customers in a particular market really need and it just makes sense to have this kind of program in place. I can't imagine why more universities and research institutes aren't doing it. I think it could not only benefit industries by giving professionals in them the products they want, but also save a lot of time and money.

I agree it is important to provide courses that exercise students knowledge in a practical way. This prpares them for the real world. Key elements of these courses are team-work, working closely with a "client", using an engineering design process, critical thinking, and communication (both written and oral).

Another example is the course I teach at Stanford - Perspectives in Assistive Technology - where students work on projects that benefit an individual with a disability or an older adult in the local community. Projects are "pitched" in class and come from researchers, family members, health care professionals, as well as people with disabilities or older adults. The projects represent real-world problems.

This is a ten-week course open to everyone, not just engineering students. Class sessions are filled with guest lecturers, field trips to local facilities, and an assistive technology faire.

Community members (several have disabilities) are encouraged to attend the class sessions and add to the in-class discussions.

Hi, Dave, thanks for your comment and for telling me about your class. It sounds great--something that benefits both the students and the community, giving the students hands-on practice in the real world. And I also like that it's open to anyone who wants to take it and learn how to develop these projects. I'll take a look at the information you provided.

It won't be too much longer and hardware design, as we used to know it, will be remembered alongside the slide rule and the Karnaugh map. You will need to move beyond those familiar bits and bytes into the new world of software centric design.

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